In today’s episode, Tyler takes you through the latest developments in the markets after a parabolic move to fresh all-time highs, even as we see a brief pause with some red on the screen. Get ready for a fast-paced ride through ...
Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday afternoon everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a fantastic day out there today. Hope your week is going great here as well. We did get some red on the screen for our markets today after hitting some fresh all time highs this morning. And that’s all right.
I’ll break down a few reasons today why pauses like this are to be expected. Because what an incredible move it’s been. Really parabolic move higher this week and especially the last couple of sessions. I’ve got some charts to break that down. So some of the biggest movers and where we see some opportunity in this market right now and really everything in between what we expect to see going forward. Because what a roller coaster it really has been the last couple of months from all time highs to start off the year in a big move higher to start off the year. We’ll recap some of that as well because in some ways that feels like a very long time ago, longer than five months ago, that’s for sure. So we’ll go through some of that.
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Of course, the Iranian conflict, right? 10% sell off in the market, individual companies hit much harder and the V shaped recovery and the parabolic move higher since we’ll put some of that in perspective, including a new dot com comparison in there that you won’t want to miss. This is a fun one too. So on a day with some red on the screen, we’ll try to have some fun with it. Right? Because it has been an eventful year for sure. But when you’re just right here, still at all time highs after a move like that, it is a fun time. So we’ll keep it short and sweet here for you today. And I highly encourage you, if you haven’t listened to it already, Kip’s podcast yesterday. If you’re looking for a little bit longer of a podcast, put some phenomenal detail in there, really just from the last what we’ve seen from this market overall.
Right. But what we really saw in this parabolic move higher the last couple of days and then again what we expect to see going forward. We think this is such an exciting time to be in the market. So buckle up if you’re new here to the vra and VRA here for new to tuning in with Kip and I or new to the markets as well, whatever that may be. Welcome first and foremost and we’re going to have a lot of fun. Like I said, buckle up. We’ve got some great stuff here and some great reasons why you must own this market. And if you don’t already, it’s okay.
You have not missed out. Yes, I’ve talked a lot today about this parabolic move higher. But if our, if history is our guide and the projections that we laid out in our book behind me right here, The Big Bribe, we still have a whole lot higher left to go in this market. So let’s go ahead and start diving into some of these. We’ll cover earnings today. Just one quick one here after the close. Of course our major indexes are sectors and what we saw from the internals. So under the hood of this market today and again where we see some bright spots and some opportunities after such a big move higher.
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And we’ll wrap it with our VRA Commodity Watch. So jumping right in here, what a just phenomenal earnings season that it has been so far. So this hadn’t even updated for this week just yet but I do want to read this one because a lot of numbers, I want to make sure that I, that I get them right here for you. But so far the earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 for the first quarter increased from 15 to 27.1%. Massive, massive numbers there that will mark the highest year over year earnings growth rate since Q4 2021. So you know, a while back, not like it was just a couple years ago or anything and we were led by communication services here. We were is really a proxy for tech at the end of the day. But mega cap driving once again, this is a theme that we talked about just over a month ago.
This is when the mega cap names really can earn their stripes and we’ve seen it so far, you know, Google’s continued to hit all time highs, Amazon hitting all time highs and a lot of names participating. This is again when they earn their stripes, when they earn their turn their name as the generals, the leaders of this market. And we have seen them driving growth and the earning surprises to the upside. They’ve been leading everything in this market so far. So great to see. And when the mega caps do reach a long run, that’s when we would expect the rest of the market to start to pick up the pace again. Because anyone who has said and continues to say that it’s only seven stocks leading this market, whether it’s, you know, Google, Amazon, Google is Alphabet Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, other two there, they’ll come to me at some point. But regardless, anyone who’s saying that it’s Only seven stocks leading this market really isn’t diving under the hood because the earnings beats from a number of companies in the semis.
Have you seen them? Incredible moves. So that’s not a sign of a market top. Markets don’t top until after earnings peak and even then it’s usually a long time after earnings peak. So we’ve got a long way to go here and we’ll dive into some of those comparisons today. Let’s go ahead and do it now. We’ll go ahead and cover our markets really quickly here because there was some red on the screen, red across the board here. And we we finished off of the lows of the day though, which is good to see. So we’re still maintaining some smart money hours throughout this process.
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And again, I’ll cover this some more in a minute, but Kip and I have talked about it a lot. For the last week we’ve been at extreme overbought on steroids. And we’ve said it too, that when a market gets overbought and keeps heading higher, stays overbought, there’s nothing more bullish than that. But for our discipline here at the VRA with the VRA investing system, that’s not when we’re buying positions, you can and if you look back on history, buying just the S&P 500 at all time highs actually is a fantastic move. So if you’re brand new to the market again, it’s not too late. If you go back a few of my podcasts ago, I shared a great chart that showed if you had bought the S&P 500 at all time highs, you would have outperformed buying it almost any other day. So that’s the kind of stats you get here from us at the VRA. And while those S&P 500 returns were phenomenal, we’ve outperformed the S&P many of the last three years with average gains per year roughly 35 to 37% on average from when we wrote the Big Bribe.
So we’ve beaten the markets 19 out of 22 years. Our primary bogey. I said the S&P earlier, but our primary bogey is the Russell 2000. That’s a more accurate representation of our portfolio structure, is an aggressive portfolio, but we have a great track record of beating the market. I’ll dive in to some more of that today. Again, if you’re not already with us, why not come and join us? We’ve got a 14 day free trial going on right now, so you can do it all absolutely risk free. All right, so Again, back to our markets on the day we started out not, you know, looking pretty good. We hit some all time highs this morning for a number of our major indexes.
So for example here our leader on the day today was the nasdaq. I say leader, it was red, but only down 1/10 of 1%. Did hit an all time high earlier in the session. I’ll also point out here because we talk so much about it, when you’re looking at tech, we always look at the semis. Did not hit an all time high recently. But just two days ago I showed you the parabolic chart of the comparison SOX or excuse me, SMH to the S&P 500. When that chart is showing an uptrend, that’s when you want to be long this market. So quickly here, let’s take a look at this because I want you to think back for a second.
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Like I said, we’ll recap a little bit of what we’ve seen so far this year. I’ll give you a little bit of context and I’ll start with a question. After everything we’ve gone through this year and the big pullback that we saw in our major indexes, sectors, individual names everywhere, right? How much do you think at the lows the semis were down for the year of 2026? Let that one resonate for a second. How much were the semiconductors as an index down for 2026 at the lows? Well, would it surprise you if I told you the semis? Take a look at the chart if you’re listening. If you’re on audio only, I’ll walk you through. Would surprise you if I told you the semis were actually Never lower in 2026. Let me zoom in here a little bit first. All right.
This is a one year chart. Just by month though, so we could zoom out and take a look again. For any audio listeners, I’ll walk you through it. Here we have December, the lows. The closing price in December, as you see on this chart here was 7,083 for the chart of the semiconductor index SOX dollar sign SOX the low again, 7,000 or the close of the month 7,083. The lows of 2026 which means we never got below it. 7,084. One point away from turning negative on the year and it never did it, you know, pretty incredible.
That one surprised me when I saw it. So now let’s, let’s zoom out a little bit, look at maybe what the returns are for the year. If you’re on video you might be able to do some quick math in your head and figure it out, but I’ll go ahead and share it here as well, because this one also surprised us a little bit. The semis, even with this mat, the pullback we’ve seen this year, are up 57 and a half percent on the year. This year. And I bring that up because Kip talked about this yesterday. The Nasdaq, our call for the year is that the Nasdaq will be up 50% on the year, S&P, up 30%. We got called crazy at the beginning of the year.
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We got laughed at during the pullback, but the semis are already there. It’s only May. We’re up 57 and a half percent. We think that the NASDAQ and Mega Cap Tech and the other names outside of the Mag 7 and outside of the semis will rally as well. So, again, I know that the 50% for may call, or excuse me, 50% for the year call is a big one. But there’s an example of how quickly it can happen. I mean, just I look at this chart one more time. I mean, I.
I’ll share it one more time, too. This is incredible. It really is. Just a month ago, a month and seven days ago, March 30, to be exact. If we go to the daily chart, March 30 was the day we were even on the year. Now a month and seven days later up, now we’re at 57 and a half percent on the year. That’s how quickly it can happen. That’s a parabolic move higher here.
So I am going to speed up a little bit in my podcast just because of this point that you can see it here in this chart, that we are at extreme overbought on our VRA momentum oscillators. Now this, this is an index. It doesn’t have all the images. I’ll just give you a quick view visual here of what it looks like. So SMH is the other one. We’ve pulled back a little bit here. But again, when you’re at extreme overbought levels like this, it’s our discipline that this is not when we are buying new positions. As a matter of fact, you know, we’ll.
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We’ll begin to set stops. We’re always looking to catch about 80% of that move and we happen to miss a little bit. Or, you know the old adage, you never go broke taking profits. And what we just did here, we got to extreme overbought levels. We had a position here in a leveraged ETF that we bought three months ago. And we closed it out. Our stops got hit today. We made 47% in that trade.
In just three months. In just three months, you know, phenomenal trade. And we’ll use those profits to dollar cost average into our VRA 10 baggers. That’s our strategy here at the VRA. That’s a simple breakdown of it right there. But if you go, if you’re not already with us again, come check out the portfolio. We lay out all of our previous trades there. You’ll see our recent winners, some that we’ve closed out this year as well with big gains like that.
And we’ve used those to add in dollar cost average into our favorite positions because it has been a phenomenal run. But we’re not at the end of it by any means. But it won’t be straight up along the way. Right. Just think about Monday. A lot of people were afraid that the Iranian conflict was going to heat back up. I talked about it on my Tuesday podcast because right away, the next day, back to all time highs. Not saying we’re going to be back to all time highs tomorrow, necessarily in the market.
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Maybe we need a little bit of pause here, but we’ll look at that as a pause that refreshes. And as soon as we start to get back to any thing near oversold levels, we’ll be ready to go again. And still at this time, we are positioned aggressively long. We just happen to take some profits in a position here. So we think that. Not think. I mean, we think that the Iranian conflict is a rearview mirror issue. We might see one day sell offs like that, but we won’t see the big whoosh where every stock is moving together, every index, every commodity is, you know, moving lower and then V shaped recovery higher.
We’ll see some pauses that refresh it. And today is a good example of that. This week’s a good example of that. While our major indexes are at overbought levels, we saw some really good action in areas like software. IGV was up big today. Some of our other FIFO names up big. Tesla, which we have in the portfolio, up big, some semi names up big. So those are the kind of rotations that we’ll look for.
And especially when you see stuff like this money supply hitting record highs. I’m going to jump around here a little bit to wrap it up for the day, but this is a major theme of ours and we just found this out. Money supply not only here in the US but globally Hitting all time highs. That’s when you have to be long stocks we wrote about in the Big Bribe. If you want to learn more, come and join us and you get a free digital copy of the Big Bribe is on page 42. A lesson from Kip’s mentors. When they looked at M2 money supply and they saw growth, they had to be long the market. Especially if it was growth of 10% plus in money supply.
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Right. During COVID If you zoom out here, that was we added 40% to our money supply from the beginning of 2020 to the peak in 2022. Almost 40% to our money supply during that time. Over 30 for sure. And now we’re back on the rise again. Again, you must be long stocks and sentiment too. Look at this. AAII.
Even though we’re at all time highs, this parabolic move higher bulls only picked up.02 percentage point in neutral investors a lot Fear and greed index. We’re not at extreme greed mode either. Okay, again, early innings here during the dot com era, which we talk so much about, The NASDAQ rallied 585%. And have one more comparison here for you today. Because what a lot of people look at is one of the kickoff points was the launch of Netscape, okay. 1994. And the market went on to go nuts. Right.
We’ll look at this is our chat GPT moment in the market that we’ve talked so much about as well. It’s almost identical here. We’re actually below where we were after Netscape launched. The nasdaq was up 155%. You know, since ChatGPT launch. We’re up a little bit more than that now. Right. But this is what we still have to look forward to.
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So much bullishness to come. What an exciting time to be in the market overall, really. And so again, it’s never going to be straight up. There’ll be pauses along the way and we’ll use those as opportunities. We think now that all this is behind us and we’ve had two 10% pullbacks in the last 14 months, that the pullbacks will be short and sweet going forward. Doesn’t mean they can’t last a little bit longer than you thought. But they’re all going to be fantastic buying opportunities. All right, quickly here.
Looking at the internals on the day today, not great numbers, you know, I would say. And Kip and I were talking about this before the podcast. Not terrible though. And even yesterday and the day before at all time highs. Kip and I both Said it. No great beats, no big two to one beats or anything. Beginning to look like a market that did just go on a 50% rally, right? A little tired and that’s okay. Not unhealthy, but a little tired.
And again, when you start to see that kind of action, we’ll look for a little bit of a pause that refreshes in the market. I’m sorry, I just realized I didn’t wrap up our major indexes quickly here. The S and P did hit an all time high down roughly 4/10 of 1%. After that, the Dow Jones down 6/10 of 1%. And the Russell 2000 down 1 1/2% has been leading to the upside again, kind of that pullback after a big move higher. But back to the internals here. No bad beats or anything. Again, looks like a market that just, you know, needs a little, needs a little nap if you will.
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Nothing crazy. Still very healthy. No big beats were negative. No 2 to 1 negatives though. Advanced Decline 52e highs, lows positive actually is this is a lagging indicator, but positive still. NASDAQ and the NYSE volume was a little rougher, especially on the NYSE. But not even 2 to 1 negative on the NASDAQ today. For our sectors, we did have two positive sectors on the day.
The tech sector hit an all time high and we also had communication services higher on the day today. And final point here before I get to our commodities because I loved Kip’s point yesterday about animal spirits. That as you saw from sentiment, I mean as you saw and what the potential for this market right from the Netscape example. We have not gotten into animal spirit mode for this market. Everyone’s all bowled up, everyone’s making money and the party has really begun. We think that will really, we said that the innovation revolution will really kick into high gear this year. We expect that to still be the case. But we also have so many exciting events.
Coming UP is the 250th anniversary of our great country. We got the World cup this summer. The Iran conflict will be behind us for the market. We expect great earnings and animal spirits to really come to life along the way here. And we’ll really know that we’ve entered the roaring 2000s and that’ll take place for our commodities as well. They’ll resume their move higher right now in after hours. Gold at $4,700 an ounce. Silver almost at $80 an ounce again now.
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Copper $6.13 a pound. Oil below $100 a barrel. $96.90 a barrel. And finally here for today, Bitcoin, you know, has been trying to stay above that $80,000 mark. Basically right at it right now, though, at 79,915. Folks, that is all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our podcast every day at the market close. And whatever platform you’re on, we’d always love it if you give us a like share comment, whatever it may be.
And if you have any questions you don’t want out there in the open, you can email us anytime at support@vinsider.com and if you have some topics you want to hear us cover, let us know there as well. We’d love to hear from you. So thanks again for tuning in. Until next time, we’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close.
In today's episode, Tyler breaks down a volatile market session shaped by geopolitical tensions, including an escalating Iranian conflict and a high-profile True Social post from Donald Trump. You’ll hear key insights on what’s happening under the surface of the markets, the resilience of the semiconductor sector despite heavy selling, and a dive into sentiment indicators that may surprise you. Tyler also shares his perspectives on the upcoming midterms, why political certainty matters to markets, and delivers an exciting update on SpaceX and its ambitious plans for Mars colonization. Plus, get the latest on sector performance, the Fear & Greed Index, and what the data means for investors looking ahead to the end of the year. Stay tuned for a well-rounded analysis and the contrarian moves shaping today’s market landscape. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.
Welcome to another episode of the VRA Investing Podcast with your host, Tyler Herriage. In today’s show, Tyler Herriage breaks down the strong start to the week for the markets, following a tough sell-off last Friday—the worst day of the year so far for the S&P 500. He discusses why there’s no need to panic, sharing historical stats that reinforce this bull market’s staying power and why short-term dips are just part of the journey. We’ll cover major headlines like Tesla’s surge on the back of big news from their newest major investor—the “Chinese Warren Buffett”—as well as what’s heating up in the IPO world with OpenAI’s recent filing. Tyler Herriage will review key index moves, sentiment readings, sector highlights, internals, and commodities including Bitcoin and notable winners like Galaxy Digital. Plus, he touches on practical investment strategies, the outlook for VRA’s favorite “10 bagger” stocks, and why now could be a generational opportunity for retail investors. Stay tuned for all the essential stats, stories, and actionable insights from today’s market action!
In today's episode, Kip breaks down a turbulent Friday in the markets, where a brutal selloff sent shockwaves through major sectors but also revealed underlying signals of opportunity. From a rare 39% spike in the VIX to sharp declines in semiconductors, gold, and bitcoin, Kip explores why volatility is the true price of admission in bull markets and why panic selling may be the biggest mistake investors can make right now. With insights on recent jobs data, upcoming IPOs, and critical market indicators, this episode is packed with the actionable analysis and contrarian perspective you need to navigate today's market chaos and prepare for the opportunities ahead. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.
In today’s episode, Tyler breaks down a record-setting day in the markets, with the Dow Jones and other major indexes hitting all-time highs. He discusses current market trends, the breadth expansion, and the rotation of this bull market, highlighting the persistent strength beyond the headline-making “Magnificent Seven” stocks. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.
Welcome back to the VRA Investing Podcast! It’s a jam-packed Wednesday as Kip Herriage returns after three days away with an in-depth market update. Today, Kip Herriage breaks down the end of the market’s nine-day winning streak, why he believes this is a "buy the dip" moment, and how the VRA System signals there’s plenty of room left in this powerful, long-lasting bull market. He covers headlines from a parabolic surge in semiconductors and AI stocks, to the impact of global events on oil and rates, and the market’s anticipation for the SpaceX IPO. On the company front, we get updates on Tesla's breakthrough robo-taxi rollouts in Austin and promising news for Lost Soldier investors. Kip Herriage also unpacks the latest in Bitcoin volatility, gold and miners, and why retail investors may be selling the recovery short. Strap in for a fast-moving, insight-packed episode that puts the week’s major financial headlines into sharp focus!
